Clif Blunderbrows

I think that’s a bit of a reach but thanks for drawing attention to that vyrkos symbol. I’d never seen it before and it’s dope as hell!

Aaand let’s not forget that GW indicated there would be a reprint of Cursed City along with new expansions. Seems like GenCon would be the perfect venue for a big reveal on that front.

I loved the shadow stalkers in warcry, and I love this new underworlds warband. Whether or not they belong to malerion, having two examples of these in secondary games now feels very promising in terms of potential for a full army release in the shadow Aelf aesthetic.

I hate to toss more fuel on the soup-tome bonfire, but is the timing of these two battle boxes the writing on the wall for DoK and IDK players? As an IDK player with a minimal interest in DoK, I have mixed feelings about the idea—though I’d rather they condense the multitude of Aelf releases than give the duardin the same treatment.

I really couldn’t care less about the animations… I’ve been waiting for a subscription service that delivers digital versions of rules, battletomes, warscrolls, etc and if that’s what this is then the price is a steal. I'm afraid we will still be required to buy each individual battletome to access its content in the app though.

While I think it’s perfectly reasonable for everyone (myself included) to immediately associate Kragnos’ prison with Beastgrave from the limited teases we were presented with at the time, I’ll also point out that sentient geographical features aren’t exactly “rare” in the various narratives of the mortal realms. Both of the Lumineth novels and BR:Teclis feature (different and unrelated) living mountains, and the land masses of both Ghur and Ghyran are described as being alive in the core book if I remember correctly. Looking back at it now, it almost feels silly to have assumed that the relatively generic phrase “living mountain” referred to that one mountain we already knew about... “So, what, you think all us mountains look alike??” -Avalenor, probably.

Am I the only one who got the impression that Warhammer+ was being billed as more than just a platform for the animations? They repeatedly suggest that these are just one piece of what will be offered, and in my mind this seems like the perfect opportunity to roll-out a subscription plan for battletomes/codexes with other incentives sprinkled in to justify premium pricing. I wouldn’t be surprised necessarily if it really is just a streaming platform, but if they’re going to start pushing their paper products into a more modern format this seems like a pretty natural fit.

Yeah, entirely possible (even likely)! But I’m still lumping that reveal in as bonus hype for me, just in case it ends up being some left-field 40K thing.

Yeah, I’m working off the assumption that the two Lumineth kits, the vampire UW warband and hero, and the new Broken Realms book are the only AoS announcements planned for Saturday. Which in my mind is already an amazing preview show. So adding literally anything on top of that would really just put me over the moon in terms of hobby hype!

More than any other rumor engine, this one really has me at a loss for what exactly I’m looking at. If these really are vampirates, they really ought to consider resurrecting a duardin to give their craftsmanship a once over....

Don’t be too quick to dismiss the quality of what few AoS novels we do have. I miss the eight lamentations series as much as the next nerd, but I was pleasantly surprised by the high flying adventure of Ghoulslayer, so another Gotrek adventure from Hinks is super welcome. Same for the lumineth novel: Realm-Lords has made the emotion-wrestling lore of that faction much more engaging to me than the battletome did. The disproportion of 40k to Mortal Realms books is a bummer, but at least what we are getting has been pretty top notch (at least in my opinion). And I wonder if the difference might be simply be that at the end of the day authors make more money from writing 40K novels, either in contracts or from copies sold. edit: @JPjr says it best on that last point!

Just want to throw out there that I, for one, am actually a huge fan of the unhelmeted twinsouls faces. It’s like they were once conventionally attractive, but then just kept pushing the sliders further and further until they warped into grotesque. I think it’s a very nuanced sort of disturbing that is difficult to pinpoint, and the sculptors really nailed it!

I understand the sentiment but this seems to be implying that any translation of a siege battle HAS to be faithful to a real-world representation of what is or isn’t effective. It would be like saying “Well, the siege of Helms Deep would be cool to see on the big screen, but think about all the months we’d have to sit in the theater just to get to the good part!” I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t have awesome rules simulating things like choosing between weakening a fortification (save penalty to garrisoned troops) or destroying essential infrastructure (bravery penalty or mortal wounds per turn to represent fires or destroyed stockpiles or something). And the long-term aspects can be heavily abstracted (choose a tactic before the battle to gain bonuses or penalties as appropriate) or just completely thrown out the window because “We just want to get to the epic part”. That said, I do agree that actually representing fortifications on the table is a more relevant hinderance. Seems like there would either be too little terrain to feel like an awesome siege, or the cost of entry would be far too high (either in time spent to create your own or dollars sunk on “Azyrite Ruins 5.0: This Time It’s Literally the Whole City”).

Bummer, the book is less ubiquitous among stormcast (warrior chamber at least). I’ll maintain though that unless GW says “this guy used to be an excelsior war priest (yeah, THAT one)!” there’s still hope—especially since he is prominently featured in the art for the Soulbound RPG. Plus, tenbrael shard and mistweaver whats-her-name are seeing new life in warcry form, so I’d say keep those spirits up!

Is it actually confirmed somewhere that this is intended to be the same character? The pose, skin tone and his righteous dome are the only similarities I see that aren’t just generic Sigmar/Stormcast icons. If his book is on the back of the model I’d be more sold, but all I see are a scroll and that battle padlock so many Stormcast seem to be so fond of.

I was thinking about this, and decided I would love to have Namarti associated with crustaceans. Maybe representing the beasts of burden used by the lay people (farmers, builders, traders) before they had to militarize them in response to the Necroquake. In any case, I hope they really lean into the class dynamics between Namarti, Akhellian, and Isharann for the next Battletome, I think that’s an area ripe with conflict, compromises and exceptions to the rule to be explored.

I’m not a death player so I might be missing something here, but you’re specifically calling out warscrolls which are available for free online. As I understand it, aside from warscrolls what you would need are the allegiance abilities, the core rules, the current generals handbook and any relevant FAQs. Which would bring you down to (correct me if I’m wrong) forbidden power, the gaming book, and maybe the Nighthaunt Battletome? Or does legions of grief also use allegiance abilities from Legions of Nagash? Regardless, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong about how spread out the rules are—I agree 100%, it’s a pain in the ass. I just want to point out that if your major issue is with warscrolls, you may be able to rectify that now (and for free).

*scowls in deepkin*

I think Teclis’ face makes him look like a stuffy, pompous ******. ...which seems entirely on-brand for him, and therefore I’m all about it. If I weren’t feverishly treading water in the Deepkin pool, he and Celennar would be a day one purchase for sure!

Interesting point. With those caveats, I can’t think of any either. Granted, the first two conditions are arguably arbitrary rules, along the lines of “if you exclude all the circumstances where it has happened, then you realize it has never happened!” But to your point I think myself, and surely many others have been repeatedly disappointed by a lack of additional models accompanying new battletome releases without realizing the relatively limited precedent for them. Good for setting expectations, and exciting to consider what the next wave of army releases might bring!

Exactly this. It makes perfect sense to me given the history of the Lizardmen in the Old World and the new reality of the Mortal Realms that BOTH would be the case, no retconning needed! If the original Seraphon are the memories of the Lizardmen that existed previously, then there’s presumably a hard cap on how many can be summoned (the number of skinks/saurus that existed in Lustria before the world asploded). Knowing that each Mortal Realm is something like 8 times the size of the ENTIRE old world, the need to create new, non-remembered Seraphon to secure/protect the interests of the Slann seems obvious. Anyway, sorry to dig up that horse again. My neck beard gets itchy when folks talk like it has to be one way or the other 😛

The back of the model is what this is predicted to be, which I think is a safe bet. Also, with so many of what was assumed to be new AoS aelves turning out to be other things, seems like a good time to re-assess our expectations of seeing new pointy ears any time soon.

The post in question for those who haven’t seen it. Buried in the comments the Warhammer community account replies: “They do look very cool! These were made by out Armies and Battlefields team, but we'll pass the interest in a kit along for sure.” Of course, they may not know much more than we do, but certainly cause to temper our expectations.